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 In February 2012, The Civil Wars – a duo comprising Joy Williams and John Paul White – won two Grammy Awards: Best Folk Album for their debut album, Barton Hollow, and Best Country Duo/Group Performance for its title track. It’s easy to hear why.

Originally released in the States last year, Barton Hollow’s love-torn, life-worn songs have finally dragged their weary, tired bones across the Atlantic just in time to soundtrack the onset of spring – or, rather, the end of winter. Because, in these original songs – and even in a bonus track, a quirky yet elegiac take on Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean – there’s a both a sense of finality and new beginnings, the ebb and flow of life and love.

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Much of this is down to the interplay between Williams’ and White’s vocals – soft, dulcet, tentative whispers of musical conversation that, alone, sound scared and vulnerable but, when they sing together, are stronger and more powerful.

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Nowhere is this more evident than on the record’s highlight and centrepiece, Poison & Wine, a plaintive, forlorn swirl of conflicting emotions. "I don’t love you," the pair sing in unison on its searching, wistful chorus, "but I always will" – and immediately that paradox comes alive through the aching, trembling, brittle frame of the song and the defiance of its lyrics and vocal delivery. – BBC